Stories Seldom Told

What happens when the thing you rely on to cope becomes the thing that almost destroys you? In this episode of Stories Seldom Told , I speak with writer, filmmaker and creative producer Benji Thomas about his journey through addiction, recovery, and rebuilding a life with purpose. From working in London’s nightlife scene as a teenager, to experiencing withdrawal seizures, multiple rock bottoms, an...

At 25, Todd McGuire's life changed forever when he discovered that his partner had taken her own life. Consumed by grief, guilt, and unanswered questions, he spent years trying to outrun the trauma. What followed was a remarkable journey into the dangerous world of undercover policing where Todd adopted a new identity, infiltrated criminal networks, and repeatedly risked his life - all while b...

In this very touching episode of Stories Seldom Told, I speak to clinical psychotherapist and bestselling author Sonali Gupta about grief — not just as loss of a loved one, but as something far more universal. About the very real topics of loss, healing, and how we learn to carry love after losing loved ones. Together, we discuss how grief transforms over time, the fact that there isn’t one “right...

What do objects remember… that we don’t? In this deeply reflective episode, we sit down with AT Boyle, the mind behind Ex Objects, a project born from loss, memory, and the quiet stories hidden in everyday things. From a preserved wedding cake dove to fragmented paintings shaped by grief, this conversation moves through the spaces we often avoid: loss, distance, and the things left unsaid. More im...

Neha Kirpal returns for a deeply personal conversation about loss, resilience, and the realities of mental health. In this episode, she speaks openly about her younger brother Arjun — the life he lived, the struggles he carried after years of childhood trauma, and what it meant for her family to lose him to suicide. Neha reflects on the signs families often struggle to recognise, the gaps in menta...

Neha Kirpal is a social entrepreneur and mental health advocate whose life has been shaped by resilience, caregiving, and the courage to turn pain into purpose. In this episode, she speaks candidly about growing up with a mother living with schizophrenia, navigating childhood trauma, and how those experiences led her to build one of India’s leading mental health platforms. From survival patterns t...

Dr. Marc Boaz is an existential psychotherapist, academic, and policy advisor whose work rethinks trauma through a deeply human lens. In this episode, he speaks about his own experiences, the inner work that shaped him, and how meaning-making became central to healing. Marc shares insights from his career across psychotherapy, teaching, authorship, and national policy — especially his work with ma...

Growing up in Cornwall, surrounded by the music and lyrics of 80s pop, Alan Green always had a deep connection to sounds, music, and storytelling. Sure enough, he took on his path of adulthood, the big-city, structure and stability. Until the unexpected happened. A redundancy notice. A pause. And a question: “What now?” In this episode, Alan shares how that moment of uncertainty became a turning p...

After a successful 20-year career as a journalist and corporate executive, Carole Hopson made a bold decision to step into the cockpit. Today, she is a Boeing 737 Captain with United Airlines, based in Newark, New Jersey, and she's one of the few Black women in the world to hold that position. Carole’s journey wasn’t easy. Having faced an accident, financial sacrifice, the rigor of flight school,...

Solange Ndip is the founder of Solange Rising Star (SRS), a survivor-led movement born from her own experience of SA trauma and resilience. What began as a deeply personal journey of healing has grown into an organization uniting survivors, witnesses, and allies to transform pain into collective power. “Our voices, once silenced by fear, can become the sound of hope.” Through initiatives like Kach...

"So what if it's hard? So what if it takes time? So what if I've stumbled before? I will keep going." Lt. Col. (Dr) Dharamdatt Goel (Retd.) is a Motivational Speaker and Corporate Trainer, with a Doctorate in Psychology, and a Postgraduate Degree in Personnel Management. In 2002, he lost a leg below the knee while on an operation at the Line of Control. However, he was undeterred as he embraced ma...

Megan Davis is a lawyer turned author of two novels, The Messenger and Bay of Thieves. The latter released in 2024 follows two women, Vanessa and Kate, who get dragged into a glamorous but dangerous world of financial crime and corruption spanning London all the way to the south of France. Bay of Thieves was the Sunday Times thriller of the month for July 2024. It's been described as "A timely, gr...

Dr. Satyen Sharma is a consulting psychiatrist who has been working in Punjab and in and around Delhi for 16 years. He was trained at the prestigious Armed Forces Medical College, in Pune, India. Satyen has held leadership positions as Secretary and then President of the Indian Association of Private Psychiatry. His areas of interest are addiction psychiatry and general adult psychiatry. "It would...

Sindhu Wadhwa likes to call herself a glorious mess. On good days, she wears her ADHD diagnosis like a crown, on other days she is a reluctant adult. Sindhu is also a freshly minted cat lady. For the last 19 years, Sindhu has been a clinical psychologist and a practicing psychotherapist. She currently heads the therapy team for MindSmith India which is a premium brain health platform. Sindhu is al...

Robert Newcome is an author and retired Army officer best known for his novel The Name Beneath the Stone . In addition, Robert has worked a retail manager and a management consultant specialising in leadership training. During lockdown he posted a 500-word story every Saturday and he now writes full time. War is often a setting for his novels.  "I joined the Army, at the age of 19. At the age of 2...

Shubha Priya shares her opinion on death, dying and how to grow old. Shubha has previously served as a Creative Director in leading advertising agencies around the world. She is currently fulfilling her lost childhood dreams of being an author and musician. She wrote, illustrated and designed her book of satirical verses for adults, called Whimsical Brew. When Shubha was in her teens, she heard Ma...

Rachel Thomas was the first Indian woman to compete for India in a skydiving competition in 1987. After 23 years, she ended her career in 2002, when she skydived from 7,000 ft over the North Pole also creating the record of being the first Indian female to skydive over the North Pole. During her career, Rachel has completed 650 jumps in 18 countries. She has won multiple awards including the winne...

Maggie Steber is an internationally renowned documentary photographer, educator, and photo editor. Her work has appeared in major magazines, newspapers and book anthologies as well as national and international exhibitions. She has worked in 72 countries specializing in telling the stories of underrepresented people and her work has been seen in 70 exhibitions in 35 countries. Best known for her p...

Nematullah Ahangosh is an activist, poet and social worker from Afghanistan. He studied in school in Kabul from 2014 to 2018. He's also been a young member with a group of peace activists there too. Subsequently Nemat went to Chennai in India to study a Bachelor of Social Work at Madras School of Social Work where he was awarded the Budding Social Worker Award and the Best Library User Award in 20...

Onir is an award-winning Indian director, producer, screenwriter and editor. He's one of the few openly gay directors in India. Born Anirban Dhar in Samchi, Bhutan, Onir spent much of his childhood going to the cinema. Onir is best known for his 2011 anthology film, I Am . The film dealt with single motherhood, child sexual abuse, displacement and LGBTQI rights. For I Am , Onir won the National Fi...

Kushanava Choudhury is the writer of the The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta (2017). He has worked as an academic and a journalist in India and in the US. Most recently he was the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He spent much of the last decade living in India and is currently working on a book about what he witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic in New Delh...

Annette Smith (née Julien) was born in December 1927 on the small Caribbean Island of Grenada into a privileged family. She was educated in Trinidad and returned to Grenada where she completed a year of Nursing before embarking on her journey to England aged just 18. She travelled completely alone and this was her first trip abroad. In 1946, post the 2nd world war, Annette became the only black nu...

Akkai Padmashali is an Indian transgender social and political activist. She is the Founder of Ondede, an organization that works with LGBTQI+ minorities on the idea of convergence (also known as intersectionality). Akkai has written a memoir entitled, A Small Step in a Long Journey. "From criminalisation to decriminalisation to re-criminalisation. How do you accept why your society is so rigid in...

Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. He is the winner of the 2023 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize for his most recent poetry collection “Heritage Aesthetics” published by Granta. The chair of judges, journalist Samira Ahmed, described Anthony’s poetry as “beautiful, but does not sugar coat. The arsenic of historical imperial...

Yasmin is a journalist, broadcaster, author and part time professor of journalism. She writes for the i newspaper and Sunday Times magazine and has written for the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, New York Times, Time Magazine and other publications. She has won several awards including the Orwell Prize for political writing and National Press Awards columnist of the y...